Scoppe Column: Padgett's preseason expectations dead-on

Tuesday

Nov 27, 2012 at 12:01 AM

RALEIGH — Back in early August when preseason football practice was barely a week old, Southwest’s veteran coach Phil Padgett sat down with me to talk about the upcoming season for our 2012 Pigskin Preview.

Rick Scoppe-Sports Editor/The Daily News

RALEIGH — Back in early August when preseason football practice was barely a week old, Southwest’s veteran coach Phil Padgett sat down with me to talk about the upcoming season for our 2012 Pigskin Preview.

What Padgett said surprised me.

Padgett is usually the most guarded of coaches, Onslow County’s version of Lou Holtz, who could make you, me and the house cat sound like impending Super Bowl champions and his team, which could have gone undefeated for a decade, as being lucky to win a game.

Not this time.

Asked if the 2012 Stallions had a chance to go all the way, Padgett didn’t duck and weave or, more appropriately, take his surf board and paddle out to the deepest part of the ocean. And he didn’t seek refuge in coach-speak.

Instead, he said that if his players wanted to make it to the state finals, they could. The Stallions, he added, had gone to the state championship game with “a lot less talent.”

Talented, yes. But were the Stallions willing to work and willing to sacrifice to get where their coach thought they could be at the start of December?

While the answer fluctuated during the season for Padgett, the final answer was a resounding, “Yes!”

And so here we are five days away from Southwest (13-1) taking on defending state champion Swain County (15-0) for the NCHSAA 1-AA championship at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh in a battle of teams that have been here and done it.

The Maroon Devils, who have the best nickname of any of the 16 state finalists, have won eight state titles. Southwest, which can counter by saying it plays its home games at The Corral, has three state championships.

On Monday, Padgett and his counterpart from Swain County, Neil Blankenship, made the always welcome trip to Raleigh for the NCHSAA news conference featuring all the teams who’ll play for a state title at three venues Friday and Saturday.

I asked Padgett about his comments made some four months back.

Padgett said he knew then the Stallions had “enough players that had great skill” that could carry a team over a long season. That was why he said what he did, along with having a “solid” offensive line as well as a defense “we thought was going to hit you,” especially at linebacker, an area that had been wanting in recent years.

After our Pigskin Preview appeared, I heard from some coaches and others who were a bit surprised at Padgett’s comments. Not that he felt that way, only that he had actually said it. Did Padgett hear a similar refrain?

“Yeah, a little bit,” he said. “But I was being honest. It was just a team that I just felt like it had the pieces. A lot of times we had to have this, this and this for it to all come together. But we knew most of the pieces were there.

“Now obviously you can have a great team and get knocked out second round of the playoffs. So I knew that, and you’re always guarded as a coach. But I’m just so pleased that these kids have the opportunity to play for the state championship. It is such a neat thing, and I’m just proud.”

Were his comments a calculated ploy to get his team to believe in itself as much as its coach and his staff did?

Not exactly, but not far off, either.

“We wanted them to understand that it was there for them,” Padgett said. “A lot of times kids can’t see that far ahead.”

But it was a “fine balance.” Padgett wanted his team to believe, but he also didn’t want them to look too far ahead and “forget to do the things” necessary to get there.

Padgett said it was a “hard season for several reasons,” not least of all because he missed one game after having surgery for an undisclosed medical condition. There were also the normal ups and downs of every football season, which included one point in which Padgett wondered if his preseason confidence had been misplaced.

“At one time I wasn’t sure we’d get past the second round of the playoffs because that’s what things felt like during the season for awhile. Then I thought, ‘Well, maybe the team is going to buy into what it takes to get there,’” he said.

The coaches, he said, knew what it took to get the state finals.

“We just didn’t know if the kids were going to buy into what it took. But they did and now they realize, ‘Hey, maybe those guys know what they were talking about,’” he said.

But it took awhile.

On Aug. 24, Southwest lost at 3-A Jacksonville 21-14 to fall to 1-1, which Padgett said was probably the low point of the season for his players. For him, however, a nonconference loss is no reason to panic, not that he wants to lose to anyone.

“But every time after a loss we’ve worked so much harder,” he said. “And that loss helped us.”

Indeed, the following week Southwest whipped 2-A Richlands 28-7, and Padgett said he felt “as good as I could feel about this football team.”

Until practice two days later.

“We came out in Monday’s practice and four or five guys were hurt or something and four or five were not there,” he recalled, “All of sudden I’m thinking this team doesn’t have what it takes to get there because you’ve got to fight through those kind of things and be there ready to go.

“What those kids don’t understand is you can’t just throw some magic dust and expect it to happen. You’ve got to be willing to do the things that it takes.”

So what happened? How did the 53-year-old Padgett and his veteran staff make sure the Stallions did what it took?

“We weren’t going to change what we were doing. The kids wanted us to change what we were doing. A lot of times kids want you want to back off, and we decided we aren’t going to back off here. We decided you’re either going to join us or you won’t be there with us at the end, wherever we end up,” he said.

“With that, you lose a kid or two. But as it turned out, it worked out. That’s one thing I’ll say, if you’re on the right course and you stay it, you weather the bad storm, you’re going to make it to port, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Sports editor Rick Scoppe can be contacted via email at rick.scoppe@jdnews.com or by calling 910-219-8471.